Hi,
I have some tracks which require large clearance for their voltage, and I am taking them to a connector which has a smaller pitch than the required clearance. This is OK as I am using widely-spaced pins with the others un-connected, but KiCad won’t let me route on to the pads. Is there a way to overcome this?
Assuming you do either not need to worry about certification or are sure this is indeed ok then you can ignore DRC for this connection. (Connect it with “ignore DRC” set in the routing options or temporarily decrease the clearance while you connect it)
Hi Mark and welcome,
it is possible, but a bit tricky, you have to route your tracks normally to a point in front of the destination pad (left click to anchor the track), then right click (while still routing) and select “Use Custom Values”
Reducing width will not help much in this case. It is the clearance that is the problem here (as it is set so large that even a extremely thin track would be a problem) The clearance can not be changed per track segment.
My bad, I saw those fat track and didn’t pay much attention to the clearance size.
Thanks both for the comments. I wasn’t aware of the ignore DRC setting so I shall take a look at that.
Another way of doing it is by modifying the Footprint itself. You can for example remove pads 21, 22, 24 and 25 from the footprint in your first screenshot.
Or you can extend pad 23 to make it long enough so the tip has enough clearance from the other pads.
The fastest way to get to edit a footprint in Pcbnew is to select it and press [Ctrl + e], which opens that footprint in the Footprint editor, and it can update the modified footprint directly in Pcbnew, without having to bother with libraries. This is a very quick and easy way for such simple modifications.
It is as quick as:
If you made some mistake you can always re-load the footprint from an external library.
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